Have you ever wanted to hide your phone number from iMessage, or stop using a phone number for iMessage, whether for privacy reasons or another purpose? Ever wished you could use an email address instead? If so, you’ll be pleased to know that you can indeed get this done pretty easily on your iPhone or iPad.
Apple lets users access iMessage with either their phone numbers or email addresses, but the issue here is that when you set up the service on an iPhone, your phone number is used by default. Some users may wish to keep their personal phone numbers private and not share them with everyone they talk to on iMessage. And, if you’re one of them, you’ll need to force iMessage to use your email address instead. Generally speaking, it’s best to let iMessage use the default settings to prevent confusion or misconfigurations, but if you’re an advanced user who wants to change iMessage to use an email instead of a phone number, we’ll show you how to do that.
How to Use Email Address for iMessage Instead of a Phone Number, via iPhone or iPad
To use your email address for iMessage instead of your phone number, follow these steps:
- Open the “Settings” app on your iPhone or iPad.
- Scroll down and tap on Apps.
- Scroll down again and tap on Messages.
- Tap on the “Send & Receive.”
- In the “Start New Conversations From” section, select your email address setting to make sure the new people you text don’t get your phone number. Or, if you want to completely stop using your phone and make it unreachable for iMessage, deselect your phone number under “You Can Receive iMessages To And Reply From” section.
There you have it. You can continue to use iMessage with just your email address.
Likewise, you can make sure your phone number doesn’t show up during FaceTime calls too. This is achieved by changing the FaceTime caller ID on your iPhone & iPad. The procedure is fairly similar to what we discussed here.
Did you change your iMessage number to email for privacy reasons, or another purpose? Let us know the reason you used this trick, and if you have any particular insight or experiences in doing so.